The Premier League\u2019s Key Match Incidents panel has concluded that Virgil van Dijk\u2019s disallowed header against Manchester City should have stood, while also finding that VAR was correct not to overrule the on-field offside decision. The decision followed Liverpool\u2019s complaint to the Premier League after a 3\u20130 defeat, in which the club highlighted that Andy Robertson was positioned to the side of Donnarumma rather than directly in his eye line.<\/p>\n
As part of its weekly review, the KMI panel examined the incident and, according to The Times, decided it was a mistake to rule the goal out. The panel, composed of three former players or coaches, one representative from the Premier League and one from the PGMOL, judged that Robertson, although in an offside position, did not have sufficient impact on Donnarumma to justify the offside call.<\/p>\n
Despite that finding, the panel agreed with VAR\u2019s decision not to intervene. Referee chief Howard Webb defended the original decision to disallow the goal, and acknowledged the matter was not straightforward. There was no dispute that Robertson was behind City\u2019s last defender, but whether he obstructed Donnarumma was a subjective judgement. VAR\u2019s remit is to correct \u201cclear and obvious\u201d errors rather than overturn referees\u2019 real-time opinions, and because the match officials felt Robertson was involved, VAR declined to encourage a change.<\/p>\n
For Liverpool the disallowed goal was a significant setback. What would have been an equaliser was ruled out, removing a possible momentum shift, and the result stood as a comprehensive City win that left Liverpool suffering their fifth defeat of the Premier League season. The panel\u2019s review offers a measure of validation for Liverpool\u2019s protest, while underlining the narrow margins and subjective judgements that continue to shape VAR interventions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KMI panel says Van Dijk’s disallowed header should have stood but VAR was correct not to intervene..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4469,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175,238,172],"tags":[220,1215,1250],"class_list":["post-4470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-liverpool","category-manchester-city","category-epl","tag-andy-robertson","tag-controversy","tag-offside-controversy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}